Summer Movie Preview 2016

You're Not Even Ready For Summer's 10 Most Anticipated Movies

We may have finally kicked winter on the East Coast. And now we can look forward to summer movie season heating things up at the multiplexes. With it comes the usual roster of big budget sequels, reboots, hopeful franchise starters like The Legend of Tarzan, and Seth Rogen movies. We even have a new Independence Day, celebrating twenty years since the original made tearing down skylines a thing.

There’s a lot to look forward to between May and August, and we’re not just talking about the usual heavy hitters from Marvel and DC. This summer has something more to offer. So here are our ten most anticipated movies for the season.

Money Monster (May 13)

If you haven’t yet seen bad boy indie star Jack O’Connell in action, do yourself a favor and check out Starred Up and ’71. He’s guarded, rough around the edges and a well of turbulent emotions — a terrific young talent to be squaring off against a smooth operator like George Clooney. They star in Money Monster, a hostage thriller that looks like Dog Day Afternoon for the post-recession era. Clooney plays a television personality who peddles stock tips; Julia Roberts is his producer and O’Connell is the disgruntled investor who lost his savings and can’t decide whether or not to blow everything up.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (May 20)

The original Neighbors had goofball antics and the incredible Rose Byrne. It also struck a chord with its standoff between a guy who has recently creeped into adulthood (Seth Rogen) and the frat boy across the fence with the envious lifestyle and six-pack (Zac Efron). Rogen’s Mac was a stand-in for every seemingly responsible dude figuring out how to act his age while not really sure that’s what he wants. In the sequel, the generational war gets compounded with a gender war, when a sorority, led by Kick-Ass’s Chloe-Grace Moretz, moves in next door.

Sausage Party (August 12)

If you told us last year to get excited about an animated movie about talking groceries, we probably would have assumed you were high. Now that the trailer is out, we’re just assuming Seth Rogen and his team were high when concocting Sausage Party. Couldn’t you picture Rogen talking to his lettuce while preparing a salad?

Rogen and Evan Goldberg have done pretty well with their brand of stoner comedies. We’re counting on Sausage Party to muster up some of the same apocalyptic haze that made This Is The End so hilarious.

X-Men: Apocalypse (May 27)

Sure, the trailers make the latest X-Men movie look like pure digital fury and mayhem. We have faith in director Bryan Singer. His last outing was a committee planned venture, where the priority was to capitalize on the franchise’s biggest stars. They needed Hugh Jackman from the old cast and Jennifer Lawrence from the new — Mystique has never seemed so essential to an X-Men movie — so enter a time-traveling plot. Singer didn’t flinch and he ended up with the fantastic Days Of Future Past.

In Apocalypse, Singer’s dealing with the kind of end-of-the-world destruction that has become deathly dull in summer movies. But he also has the awesome talent that is Oscar Isaac, who hopefully can perform some magic under the titular villain’s extravagant costume. Fans can also look forward to new screen versions of Jubilee and Storm joining Lawrence’s Mystique, who is now morphing into a Katniss Everdeen kinda gal. Hopefully that’s not a bad thing.

Captain America: Civil War (May 6)

Look guys, Batman v Superman wasn’t thaaat bad. I’ll take its occasionally striking messiness over the drone-like franchise weaving in Avengers: Age of Ultron any day. The latter fiasco leaves us with some concern about whether Captain America: Civil War will be much more of the same.

If we’re holding out hope, it’s because the directors (Joe and Anthony Russo) did such an amazing job on The Winter Soldier, showing us how a comic book movie can drop the mould and take the shape of a 70s political thriller. So here’s hoping the Russo brothers aren’t overwhelmed by this battle royale featuring almost every character in Marvel’s stable — including the third version of Spiderman within in a decade.

The Russo Brothers have also been tasked with Avengers: Infinity War Part I and II. If they want us to get excited about those movies, Civil War better show us why.

Suicide Squad (August 5)

We’ve got Will Smith’s star power, Viola Davis’ badassery and inspired choices like Jared Leto and Margot Robbie playing the worst co-dependent couple imaginable in the Joker and Harley Quinn. We’re also big fans of Cara Delevingne, who rarely gets a role big enough for her talents. She’s here grunging it up as the ominous Enchantress. These are all big reasons to get excited but could Suicide Squad be too much of a good thing?

That’s a huge cast playing bad guys who suit up to be heroes, a real challenge for director David Ayer to get right. His track record is spotty, with duds like Fury and Harsh Times. But he’s also the guy who brought real grit to action movies like Dark Blue and End Of Watch. A comic book movie is an odd choice for Ayer, but perhaps that’s why he could make Suicide Squad the perfect antidote to superhero fatigue.

The Nice Guys (May 20)

We don’t get R-rated buddy cop movies anymore. And there’s no one better to bring them back than Shane Black, the guy who wrote Lethal Weapon and directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Judging by the previews, The Nice Guys has Black’s signature all over it: the tough detectives prone to doing foolish things, the witty back-and-forth banter and Los Angeles, all neon-lit and seductive. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling look like natural fits for Black’s hard-boiled-meets-slapstick style. The cherry on top here is the reunion between Crowe and Kim Basinger, who were dynamite together in one of the last great pulp crime movies, L.A. Confidential. If that doesn’t get you excited, then you need to drop what you’re doing and watch L.A. Confidential right now!

Operation Avalanche (TBA)

You ever hear that conspiracy theory where NASA enlisted 2001 director Stanley Kubrick to help them fake the moon landing. Well now we have a hilarious, thrilling and groundbreaking new movie that does a damn fine job convincing us the conspiracy is real.

Director Matt Johnson and his misfit team made a fake documentary about a pair of CIA agents who infiltrate NASA to find a Russian mole. When they discover that NASA can’t win the space race and make it to the moon, the agents use movie-making magic to dupe everyone into believing that Neil Armstrong took that “giant leap for mankind.”

The behind-the-scenes kicker is the borderline illegality of this movie. In order to play spies who infiltrate NASA by posing as a documentary crew, Matt Johnson and his team infiltrated NASA by posing as a documentary crew, shooting scenes for their movie on the sly. So in a way (and unbeknownst to them) NASA helped make the movie about how they faked the moon landing.

Lionsgate hasn’t set a release date for Operation Avalanche just yet but word is it’s landing sometime this summer. Let’s hope that part’s not a hoax.

Dheepan (May 6)

Director Jacques Audiard is the guy behind A Prophet, arguably the best mob movie since Goodfellas. His follow-up was meant to be a vigilante movie reminiscent of Straw Dogs. It grew into something much bigger: an unforgettable Palme D’or winner that — at a time when the world is struggling to empathize with refugees — feels like necessary viewing.

Dheepan is about a guerilla-turned-refugee who lands in a Parisian ghetto with a fake name and family. They’re trying to scrap together a life while surrounded by crime and he’s suffering from PTSD. At a certain point it becomes apparent that they escaped one war just to fight another. This one will rank as one of the best movies of the year.

Jason Bourne (July 29)

What a great way to get over the fiasco that was Spectre, with the guy who would take one look at James Bond’s laser pen before stabbing him with a No. 2 pencil.

Jason Bourne is the obvious choice for our most anticipated movie of the summer. For our money, The Bourne Supremacy is the greatest action movie since Die Hard; the Bourne Trilogy simply has no equal. Matt Damon’s former weapon of mass destruction redefined action movies for the post-9/11 era. His man-with-no-country antics, uncovering the CIA’s abuse of power abroad, would provide a style and civic awareness that even Marvel would ape.

While Ultimatum was a terrific wrap-up to Bourne’s story, we’re ecstatic to see Damon and director Paul Greengrass return to the character nine years later, just to show these new school cats how it’s done.